Oct 3, 2010

Well, you know how we go with phases of obsession here. It was fairies a while back and now it's Star Wars. I thought it was worth putting this post up right away because with it being Halloween soon, there must be a few of you that are looking for budget Storm Trooper costume solutions (especially if you have more than one kid that wants to dress up as a storm trooper!). All you need for this are a couple of gallon size milk jugs (with their lids/caps), some hot glue and something you can cut them up with (I used an exacto knife, but it would probably be doable with a good pair of scissors because the plastic is quite thin).

I thought of this while I was making the Fimo storm trouper helmet for our Star Wars peg doll set. As I was modelling the helmet I started thinking it could be approximated with strategically cut portions of milk jugs. I had to wait a couple of days until we finished our second gallon of milk and also had to be fairly confident of what shapes I wanted to cut, because I only had the two containers to work with and I knew I needed both. Here are the containers I used (still with a bit of dish soap water in them!)
These are the shapes I cut out of them to use. Pieces A and B are cut from the first milk jug and then piece C is cut from the second milk jug. This really was a prototype, so next time I think I'd go for a taller piece as section C. I guess it depends on the size of the head you're making it for though. My kids are four and just turned six, so petit was the aim of the game with this helmet.
I used hot hotglue, rather than the low temp stuff, in order to try and secure the pieces together more firmly. As you can see from these photos, piece A was the lower front and sides of the helmet and piece C is the front of the helmet from the nose up. The pouring top part of the milk jug had to be cut off to make piece C, so to cover up that and make the helmet a bit more aesthetically pleasing I cut out the circular indent from the side bit that was left over from first milk jug. This fitted in nicely to fill that hole.
I hole punched the back of the two protruding side panels so that I could put in elastic to hold it on. It's not a "full helmet", but it is significantly more than a mask. I then glued the two lids of the milk jugs on either side of the mouth part.
Once the structure was all glued together I popped it on my daughter to figure out where the eye holes needed to go. It wasn't going to work to have the eye holes cut where the storm trooper's eyes actually are, but with the milk jug being partially see through, it was easy to see where to put them and it worked out that I could hide them pretty well in the decorations afterwards.
I had a can of white spray paint, so I used that on it. You could paint it with acrylic craft paint though, or if you are smart then you could deliberately get the totally opaque white milk jugs to start with!
Here it is painted up with black, white and grey craft paint. I had the paint out already from making the peg dolls, but a grey and black sharpie marker would do the job. I decided at the last minute to put the ear cover things on (they are made from the bottom plastic sections from the containers you get from the 50cent toy dispensers around here). The horizontal black line around the forehead is just a strip of black electrical tape.
As far as clothing went, I just used a back long sleeved top with a white vest over it. I didn't have a poloneck/turtleneck so I just gave them a black dollar store ear warmer band to put on around their neck. I didn't get as far as doing anything for the lower half of this outfit, because the kids are happy to just run around in it as it is (they want to be Darth Vader and Princess Leia for halloween anyway). I hope this is useful for a few of you that have wannabe storm troopers. It's not totally accurate and if I did it again then I'd change a couple of things, like removing the front nossle to make a better version of the mouth area, but it's good enough that most young kids will be happy with it.

If you have the milk jugs, but no one wants to be a storm trooper then you could always use them to make trick or treat pumpkin pots like we did a couple of years ago, here. :)

Another Star Wars related thing that might come in handy for trick or treating is the torch and balloon light saber hack that I posted at the beginning of this year.
Most kids have a torch for trick or treating anyway, so if you have young Jedi then this might be exactly what you need to both light the way and avoid the injuries that the combination of candy high kids and expensive and solid plastic light sabers can result in ;)

Update: A while after this we made some cheap and easy x-wing pilot's helmets for the kids to lark around in. You can see those here.

There is also a post here with a printable x-wing flight suit iron on thingy that I made for the kids to go on some orange hoodies.

Last of all, if you like the Star Wars toys out of stuff from the recycling bin, then you might like the R2-D2 secret storage boxes that we made, here.

Oh, no, wait, one more... There's a bunch of Star Wars peg dolls that I made my daughter for her birthday, and the Millennium Falcon doll house that her dad made to go with them. You can see those here and here.

I'm impressed (astounded?) by how you can look at a milk jug and see the *parts* needed to make the helmet.Hmm, I shall have a look at our (smaller) milk jugs, but I don't think my boys will recognize the end result :D

Oh my - you are a genius! I am so glad I found your site as I have two small ones at home - one of whom is just getting into Star Wars.Thank you for sharing and you should really do a book!!! Best wishes, Ruth

My 4yr old saw this from across the room and came running "Star Wars!". All 3 of my kids will be wearing homemade Star Wars costumes this year. I've been asked, but couldn't figure out how to do a storm trooper. Awesome:)

I made it, not as good as yours, but kids were happy with it, I gave you a well deserved credit in my post. My blog is all in spanish and here is the link to my helmet wannabe, hahahaha. Love your blog.

THAT is way awesome! My son was a storm trooper for halloween last year, this would have been so cool!

I run Fun Family Crafts, a site similar in nature to Craftgawker and Spotlight, but different in that it's a library of craft tutorials geared only at kids. I would love it if you'd stop by and submit this to be featured! (I link to you, I don't post your tutorial on the site) Feel free to submit as many kid friendly craft tutorials as you like! http://funfamilycrafts.com/

Just added this to my pinterest contest. "Things to do with Milk Jugs"http://pinterest.com/kidschaos/pin-it-online-scavenger-hunt/Hope you'll hop over and check us out.http://www.kidscreativechaos.comLOVE THIS MASK!!!!

Hi Lindsey! Just saw this project over on DIY.org. What a great project! It would be perfect for the Masks contest I'm currently running, and other Halloween contests on Instructables.com. Check it out: http://www.instructables.com/id/Scoochmaroo-Challenge-Masks/

I made this for my son. He couldn't have been happier with his costume. I did learn a few things, like there are some milk jugs that are better to use than others. I'm now saving several different brands with plans to make some for me 3 and 1 year old.

Thanks so much for this tutorial! I made this for my son and he loved it. I posted a link to your tutorial and a few pictures of my try at it on my blog (panish only), if you'd like to see. http://antie.com.ar/2014/04/26/mascara-de-stormtrooper-reciclada/

This is such a cool idea! I'm trying to get a head start looking at ideas for our annual Halloween party make your own mask competition and I'm really considering giving this a try! I'll be sure to share my photos and give a link back if I follow through :-) Thanks for sharing the tutorial. Really impressive!

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